On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, fantasai wrote:
>
> The 'rev' attribute from prior versions of HTML is missing in WA1, and I
> think it deserves not to be left out. Most common link types out there
> are used with 'rel', but some 'rev' values can also be useful.
Actually, research suggests that rev= is basically only used when authors
make mistakes. The most common rev="" value is "made" (11 million pages
out of a billion pages), which is redundant with rel=author, and the
second most common one is "stylesheet" (2 million out of a billion pages),
which is a mistake. The next most common value is "owns" (110 thousand
pages out of a billion), which I don't understand, and the fourth most
common value is "author" (50 thousand out of a billion), which seems to be
a mistake as well.
This is a very poor track record for a feature.
> Here are some use cases:
> - rev="footnote" for a link back from the footnote or endnote to
> the source anchor in the main text
This could be handled by a rel value, e.g. rel=source.
> - rev="help" for a link to the part of the site that the help
> text is about
...as could this.
> - rev="author" on a personal site or resume for links to documents
> s/he has written
Why need a rel type at all for this?
> See also http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/Trigg.html
> for a direction link types could go in which 'rev' would be useful.
> Many of the link types suggested there would be easier to use with
> rev for the reverse link than with a separate keyword that means
> the inverse relationship.
> Example:
> rev="refutation" to link to the article one is refuting
I think we should work the other way around. We should start with a
problem, and work out the solution, not the other way around.
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> >
> > - rev="footnote" for a link back from the footnote or endnote to
> > the source anchor in the main text
> > - rev="help" for a link to the part of the site that the help
> > text is about
>
> This is largely useless, as you are unlikely to start at a help/footnote
> document and go to the document for which the help document was written.
> The most common situation is that you clicked the help/footnote like
> from the parent document, and therefore the relationship is already
> established from the parent document.
I agree.
> > - rev="author" on a personal site or resume for links to documents
> > s/he has written
>
> Here, you're using |rev| to replace missing metadata in the target
> document. What happens when <meta name="Author"> is defined in the
> target documents? Does |rev| override? What would a UA do with the
> information anyway? If there's a link, wouldn't there be text stating
> that the creator of the personal site created the document the link is
> to?
Indeed.
> > See also http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/Trigg.html
> > for a direction link types could go in which 'rev' would be useful.
>
> Well, I scanned over it, and I noticed one good point. People often
> don't bother putting in relationship types for links. Therefore, |rev|
> could establish what the relationship is when you reach the target
> document. The problem is that the argument is mostly self-defeating. If
> people fail to use |rel|, how is a reverse version of that same
> attribute going to be used with any frequency.
Evidence suggests it is not.
> At least with |rel|, you could harvest hyperlinks and put them into a
> link toolbar. With |rev|, you're describing the relationship type of the
> current document. Therefore, I really don't see what user agents are
> supposed to do with |rev| and how they can create a useful interface
> that can exploit this attribute.
Indeed.
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 sjoerd at w3future.com wrote:
>
> The user interface of rel and rev can be exactly the same, only rev
> under the heading of "reverse".
In practice, it seems authors and users alike don't really care for this.
> AFAIK there is no difference between
>
> <a href="1.html" rel="prev">
>
> and
>
> <a href="1.html" rev="next">
Indeed. So why have rev=next?
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> So, functionally, you're just breaking a link toolbar into two
> categories: "forward" and "reverse". What's the use case for this?
> Surely a "Previous" button in your links toolbar is better than
> "Reverse->Next" from a UI perspective. Or are you suggesting that the UA
> should determine the reverse of the relationship and present a button
> for it? That's really bad for things that don't necessarily have
> inverses:
>
> |rev="top"| -> "bottom"?
> |rev="first"| -> "last"?
> |rev="top"| -> "bottom"?
> |rev="ToC"| -> ??????????
Indeed.
> Also note that "refutation" is a bad example, as it would only ever be
> used in |rev|. Does anyone ever link to a refutation of their article
> from the article itself???
Good point!
> So what we're seeing is that |rev| encourages us to define relationship
> types specifically for |rev| that are useless for |rel|.
>
> Another thing is that |rev| is largely self-serving:
>
> | <a href="http://whatwg.org" rev="supreme-master-guru">
>
> By it's nature, |rev| defines how the universe relates to you. Thus, how
> can you help but put yourself at the center of the universe?
A point worth considering indeed.
On Tue, 19 Jul 2005, fantasai wrote:
>
> Or maybe I just scrolled to the bottom after reading the whole text
> straight through and want to jump to the context of the footnote I'm now
> reading. (The footnote and its context could be in the same document,
> too, y'know.)
It doesn't seem like a rel="" is needed for this. The link itself is clear
enough (see, e.g., wikipedia).
--
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http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
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